You will recall that in 2015 Obama lied to CBS’ Bill Plante when answering how he learned Hillary Clinton had used an unsecured email server. “The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports,” Obama said.

In fact, Obama exchanged 18 emails with Clinton over her unsecured, outlaw server. The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) report on the Clinton email investigation further identifies Comey’s complicity in the cover-up to shield Obama and minimize Clinton’s crimes.

The IG report discusses a key paragraph in Comey’s statement summarizing the FBI’s assessment that “hostile actors” penetrated Clinton’s server. The IG report stated: “President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account. Obama, like other high-level government officials, used a pseudonym for his username on his official government email account.”

The key paragraph, the IG report said, “referenced Clinton’s use of her private email for an exchange with then President Obama while in the territory of a foreign adversary. This reference was later changed to ‘another senior government official,’ and ultimately was omitted.”

In the Watergate Summer of 1973, Tennessee Republican Sen. Howard Baker famously asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

The American public deserves a legal answer to that very question concerning Obama. The former president has eluded any scrutiny on these subjects. The congressional inquiries by Republicans are now dead. There’s no chance House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will permit any further effort along those lines of inquiry.

When Mr. Barr takes office as the new attorney general he needs to rigorously pursue Obama’s knowledge and conduct concerning the Clinton email investigation, and the subsequent Trump frame-up orchestrated by the same “dirty cops” of the FBI and DOJ: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Baker, Ohr, Yates, et al.

So far, the cover-up of the Obama administration’s criminality has worked. Congressmen Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy each pursued leads, uncovering substantial criminal acts and misconduct. They were also contemptuously told, in essence, “Drop dead!” by the FBI and DOJ, without consequence.

Obama and his key White House advisors (such as Lisa Monaco, Robert Mueller’s former chief of staff), Kathryn Ruemmler (an alumnae of Andrew Weissman’s compromised Enron Task Force), and Susan Rice (serial Benghazi liar and author of the infamous Trump inauguration day “note to self”) and their “dirty cop” cooperators within DOJ/FBI corruptly conspired to abuse their authority in a number of ways:

Widescale “unmasking” of the identities of U.S. citizens through communications intelligence collection.

Sweetheart immunity deals to Clinton facilitators such as Cheryl Mills.

Orchestrating foreign counterintelligence incidents (i.e., Carter Page, Stef Halper, etc.) in order to “import” defensive investigations back into the United States for the purposes of circumventing laws prohibiting FBI offensive penetration of the Trump campaign/transition/administration.

The Mueller investigation (a creature of Comey’s self-righteous, vindictive, criminal leaking of classified information) grinds on without a single indictment or conviction consistent with his charter to uncover Russian collusion. Mueller looks scrupulously at everywhere the evidence isn’t.

Barr’s first order of business as AG should be to restore accountability and integrity to the DOJ and FBI. His starting point should be grounded in establishing what Obama knew and when he knew it — because we have clear evidence that, “potus wants to know everything we are doing.”

Chris Farrell is director of investigations and research for Judicial Watch and a member of its board of directors. He is a former military intelligence officer and special agent of U.S. Army Counterintelligence.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.